It was just after 9:30 a.m., July 19, 2022 — primary election day — and Joseph “Jay” Attar was at the Fallstaff Elementary polling place when authorities served their warrant. They wanted Attar, the brother of then-Del. Dalya Attar, to hand over his Samsung cellphone.
“What’s this about?” Jay Attar asked. The agents, with the Office of the State Prosecutor, said they would answer his questions after they completed some paperwork. Attar, unprompted, said, “This is about [Dalya Attar’s former political consultant], isn’t it?”
Minutes later, Jay Attar, a Baltimore County developer, was in the back of a police car, willingly giving a 20-minute recorded interview to investigators without his lawyer present.
Nearly four years later, Jay Attar, Dalya Attar, now a Democratic state senator, and Kalman Finkelstein, a former Baltimore Police officer, face federal blackmail and extortion charges as part of a case involving an illicit sex tape of one of Dalya Attar’s former campaign consultants.
The details of how authorities first approached Jay Attar as part of their investigation were revealed in newly unsealed federal court documents. The Banner’s attorneys sought to have the records made public, arguing successfully to the judge that the contents were in the public interest.
More documents may become public in the coming days.
The Attars and Finkelstein have denied wrongdoing. Dalya Attar, who is running for reelection to the Maryland Senate, released a statement in the fall saying it was she who was the real victim. Her statement seemed to confirm the existence of the sex tape, though federal prosecutors say they do not have a copy of it.
Hours before authorities approached Jay Attar, they served a similar warrant on Finkelstein at the Police Department’s Northern Precinct, the newly released court records show. Finkelstein turned over two cellphones and willingly gave up his passcode. He declined to be interviewed without an attorney, according to court records.
It’s unclear when, or if, authorities served a search warrant for Dalya Attar’s phone.
Federal prosecutors who later took over the case detailed in their original indictment a series of text messages between the Attars and Finkelstein describing their alleged blackmail plot.
The Office of the State Prosecutor, the agency largely responsible for investigating elected officials in Maryland, had been circling the Attars and Finkelstein since Jay Attar allegedly tried to extort the other person in the illicit sex tape.
Security footage from the atrium of the Greenspring Shopping Center shows Jay Attar meeting on Dec. 7, 2021, with a man identified in court documents as “Victim 2.″ A day earlier, Dalya Attar announced her run for reelection to the House of Delegates.
The man was married, and Jay Attar lured him to the Pikesville shopping center under the guise of discussing a “business opportunity,” according to the new court records.
Investigators say security footage shows the man walking around the table where they were sitting to look at something in Jay Attar’s hands. Later, authorities said, they learned Jay Attar was showing him a video of he and Dalya Attar’s former political consultant in bed at an apartment Finkelstein owns.
The consultant, who lives in Israel, had been staying there in January 2020 while doing work for other campaigns. Jay Attar told the married man to tell the consultant that she shouldn’t do anything that would hurt Dalya Attar’s campaign. If the consultant didn’t listen, Jay Attar said, he would show the video to the consultant’s daughters, her rabbi and other members of the Orthodox Jewish community, according to court records.
It’s unclear whether the consultant or the married man was the one to alert authorities about the alleged shakedown. The Banner is not naming the consultant because she is an alleged victim of a sex crime; the identity of the married man is not known.
Months later, in June 2022, the consultant posted about Dalya Attar’s voting record on Facebook, which caught Jay Attar’s eye. Prosecutors claim to have seen text messages where Jay Attar demands that the consultant delete the post or he would go to her mother’s house and “show her a video that her mother would not like to see,” according to court records.
The new court documents say Jay Attar wouldn’t tell the consultant what the video was, and said he would only do so in person. The consultant told authorities Jay Attar paid $1,700 to a travel agent to purchase her a plane ticket from Israel to Baltimore so they could meet the morning of July 18, 2022, a day before authorities seized his phone. It’s unclear if that meeting took place.
It’s also unclear what, if any, information about the case was retrieved from Jay Attar’s phone.
Attorneys for Jay Attar are seeking to have the phone’s contents blocked from trial. His lawyer, former Baltimore State’s Attorney Gregg Bernstein, argued that special agents coerced Jay Attar into giving up his passcode by claiming a judge had ordered him to do so.
No body camera footage of the initial exchange exists.
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